Why Trudeau wants to change how we vote — and why he might fail

iPolitics Insights

Governments are — and should be — judged by whether or not they keep their promises. Sure, there’s usually a bit of wiggle room, especially when facts and circumstances change. Canada’s new Liberal government has already adjusted the timeline for welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees into the country, taking the time to get it right, and it appears they’ve mostly been forgiven for doing so.

The Trudeau government’s ambitious agenda is built on hundreds of policy goals and promises. Spelled out in the Liberal election platform, these were reinforced in ministers’ mandate letters and, in some cases, re-articulated in the December throne speech.

Democratic reform is one of the major themes of the new government’s to-do list. Some of these commitments relate to the style and approach of governing, such as strengthening the openness and fairness of public institutions, committing to transparent, merit-based appointments, and helping to ensure that women and minorities will be better represented in leadership positions.

More specific promises include bringing forward a new process for non-partisan Senate appointments, strengthening the independence of parliamentary committees and ending the inappropriate use of omnibus bills and prorogation. The Liberals have also vowed to reform question period so that all ministers, including the prime minister, are held to greater account.

But perhaps the government’s most significant promise is the pledge that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system. Indeed, for many, this represents the Holy Grail of democratic reform. However, this promise will almost certainly be easier said than done.

The mandate letter for Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef establishes the goal as a top priority, instructing her to “bring forward a proposal to establish a parliamentary committee to consult on electoral reform, including preferential ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting and online voting.”

The latter is likely inevitable. An emerging generation of young Canadians seems intent on being able to exercise their democratic franchise in the same manner that they now increasingly live: online. Mandatory voting is a controversial proposition that appears to work in some jurisdictions, such as Australia. However, it’s safe to assume that opinions on this will be sharply divided in our country.

But some will ask why we should modify a voting system that essentially has served Canada since the country was founded.
The answer, for advocates of reform, is the need to make every vote count, to ensure no voter feels they’ve “wasted” their ballot and to guarantee that all elected representatives — and all governments — have the clear support of a majority of voters.

Our first-past-the-post voting system is both obviously flawed and also a misnomer. There is no ‘post’. The term actually refers to a horse race, where the winner is the first to reach the finish line, or post. When applied to democratic elections, it could more aptly be called the “winner-takes-all” system, where the candidate receiving the most votes, regardless of the percentage of total votes cast, is declared the victor. While increasingly archaic, this system is still used in a few large democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India and Canada.

The primary argument for changing this system is to guarantee that elected representatives and governments have actually received a mandate from a majority of voters. That seldom happens under our current system. While some members of Parliament are elected with a majority of votes in their ridings, close and competitive races among several candidates allow most MPs to win election with much less than 50 per cent support. This raises fears among voters of “splitting the ballot” and sometimes gives rise to strategic voting.

Likewise, political parties can and do form majority governments without winning a majority of the votes cast. Only two of the last 10 majority governments in Canada won more than 50 per cent of the vote. In the most recent federal election, the Liberals won a majority of seats in the House of Commons with 39.5 per cent of the vote.

If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that no one can safely predict the outcomes associated with implementing major electoral reforms. And there’s probably no practical means of assuring that changes are irreversible.

This raises an interesting and important question: Why would a government elected using the current system seek to replace it, especially when doing so carries a risk of uncertainty? In fact, this is one of the reasons why the status quo has prevailed for so long. And there’s also another essential question: What change would demonstrably be for the better?

Several Canadian provinces have had lively discussions about electoral reform, and in the last decade three have asked their citizens by referendum or plebiscite to consider new systems of voting. In Prince Edward Island (2005), British Columbia (2005 and 2009) and Ontario (2007), voters failed to approve proposals for reform. In each case, a very high “super-majority” of 60 per cent was required to approve the change, the argument being that it shouldn’t be simple or easy to reform something as fundamental to democracy as the way we vote. It should be noted that the B.C. 2005 referendum almost met that perhaps unreasonably high threshold, with 57 per cent voting in favour of change.

The provincial experience suggests that if the new federal government wanted to kill its own promise for action on this file, it could simply give in to those critics — including Conservative Interim Leader Rona Ambrose — who suggest that a national referendum should be required to approve any significant changes to the way Canadians vote. Instead, Prime Minister Trudeau has proposed an all-party committee that would bring forward a recommendation for change within 18 months, ensuring that the next federal election in 2019 features a new system.

It also seems clear that the committee will be looking at two basic options: preferential ballots and proportional representation. These two systems, in various permutations, are currently in use in many democratic countries. Reform purists are strongly in favour of proportionality, where a party’s parliamentary seats are aligned with their percentage of the vote. Preferential voting asks voters to rank candidates on the ballot. If no candidate wins a majority of first choices, the last-place candidate is dropped off the ballot and those votes are distributed based on second choices. The process continues until one candidate achieves more than 50 per cent support.

Both systems would represent a significant departure from the current one. Both could also make it difficult to elect majority governments on a consistent basis. The most important change likely would take the form of radically different approaches to campaigning during elections, where cooperation and alliances among parties would take precedence over personal attacks and negative advertising.

A note of caution: It may be instructive to reflect on the only time in Canadian political history that a reform of this magnitude was actually implemented. In B.C. in the early 1950s, a coalition government was contemplating how to disentangle its partnership after more than a decade in office. The Liberals and Conservatives had joined together, ostensibly, to effect a united war effort; in reality, they wanted to prevent the CCF (precursor to the NDP) from forming a government. Their successful political marriage was now headed for a divorce — but the coalition partners wanted to ensure that the socialists would not win office.

In advance of the 1952 provincial election, the coalition government passed legislation introducing a form of preferential voting called the single transferable ballot. The Liberals and Conservatives believed that their respective supporters would rank them as first and second choices, denying the CCF a victory.

What the coalition partners had not counted on were the unanticipated consequences of their reform. The public quarrelling that preceded their separation had disenchanted many voters, a significant number of whom also resented being told how to mark their novel new election ballots.

In an age before computers, it actually took several weeks to tabulate the votes by manually counting the second, third and fourth choices of voters. When the final results were confirmed, the province was shocked. A political party that had never before won a single seat in the B.C. legislature — Social Credit — had won the largest number of seats and a minority government. The reason? By not posing a threat to any of the established, bitterly competitive partisans, the virtually unknown Social Crediters became a popular second choice among voters of all parties.

The new premier, W.A.C. Bennett, then engineered the defeat of his fledgling government on a popular issue and called an election within a year. This time he won a majority. And one of his first acts was to repeal the single transferable ballot law, to make future majorities more likely.

W.A.C. Bennett, famously known as “Wacky”, remained premier of B.C. for the next two decades.

If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that no one can safely predict the outcomes associated with implementing major electoral reforms. And there’s probably no practical means of assuring that changes are irreversible.

All of which points to the salient question: Will 2015 really be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system?

David Mitchell is an author, political historian and public policy consultant. [email protected]

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